Tor fundamentally doesn’t work unless it’s 3 hops though, or am I mistaken? The anonymity comes from the middle-man node? That’s why I said it seems a bit like a VPN because you have to trust a server to not log your actions

I don't think there is anything magic about three hops. You need at least two so that no single node knows both the source and destination. With a third node you are able to isolate the first and last hop from each other to make it more difficult for collusion, but needing a third hop is probably outside the threat model for most people. With Tor what is usually more important is making sure the nodes span different providers and jurisdictions.

I do not think Tor necessarily requires 3 hops. See https://tor.stackexchange.com/a/497. It's just that 3 hops provide significant incremental benefit over 2 hops.